


I Don’t Recognise Myself in These Headlines

by FictionIsSocialInquiry



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Dom!Zuko, Dom/sub, F/M, Kinks, comfort in kink, mild choking, sub!katara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionIsSocialInquiry/pseuds/FictionIsSocialInquiry
Summary: Sometimes he ties her up with rope— dry, woven cord that intentionally leaves subtle marks in her skin. Sometimes he ties her with silk strips, destroys half a dozen formal robes just to bind the waterbender’s body; wrists, elbows, torso, knees, ankles. He’s drunk on the sight of her flesh spilling around the bonds.Sometimes, though, he ties her with words.He thinks that might be his favourite.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 196
Collections: Zutara Smut Exchange





	I Don’t Recognise Myself in These Headlines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarkedMage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkedMage/gifts).



> I’m not gonna lie, I think I failed the brief. This only loosely qualifies as smut. Congratulations, FISI, you’ve found a way to turn something as simple as a smut exchange into yet another character study. Why can’t I do the simple thing? Write the fun, sexy one shot? Why in the hell did this need to happen? Your answer is as good as mine, friend!
> 
> PSA: All characters are appropriately aged and consenting.

“ _She wasn’t afraid of his demons and he did not fear her madness._

_They saw beyond those things that life does to a person._

_And underneath it all, there’s a beautiful soul that just wants to be loved._ ”

unknown

In the beginning, it's fleeting. They stack the moments between them, the unspoken-about secret moments, they compact them down into a watertight dam wall.

But dams do burst.

Spirits help those who are in the path of the water’s love for gravity; earth and air can only do so much against such forces. Water will always follow the deepest path, downhill, always down.

Dams do burst.

It happens like this.

—

It is years and months since the comet stained the sky and the land burgundy. The people of the world are still only beginning to learn how to go about peace in the aftermath of war.

Their friends are happy for them when they finally spill the news, fumble through some version of, ‘We’re dating.’ But the world… The world looks to the young master waterbender and her Firelord consort; the world seeks to map peace from their partnership. _Here_ , the headlines cheer, _is what forgiveness and recovery look like._ Here is the way forward, something more than abstract notions _. Here is what peace looks like_.

As the weeks go by, Zuko and Katara begin to wear this weighty expectation as surely as they do crown and waterskins.

—

The first time they make love they are not each other’s firsts. They fumble and blush and gasp. They push and they pull. They spill rich, ripe autumn harvests in each other’s flesh, learn where pleasure resides and the secrets to digging for it. The first times are soft as snow.

The first times are incandescent and pure, before the weight of their responsibilities begins to shape how they draw pleasure.

It’s not until she earns the title Ambassador and he’s signed his own father’s war crimes sentencing that the dam wall begins to leak. They’ve been arguing— something they both enjoy more than they’re willing to admit— but the good natured verbal sparring becomes water and fire and before they know it, the master waterbender has the Firelord pinned to the ground.

The courtyard is empty. The young Ambassador is due to leave on a diplomatic mission to the South, frustrated to tears with the views of old men in fur-trimmed parkas who see her bending as a threat to their masculinity and her head for politics a challenge to their own power.

She is tired of it, of always having to work harder to earn the respect Sokka is given freely.

Bending over the firebender, she moves her hand.

She grips his throat.

Tomorrow, the Firelord is due to watch his predecessor— his father— face justice. There’s nothing he can do about it, even if he wanted to. The execution is mandated by the people. The courts have decided Ozai’s fate.

Zuko has no say in it.

Laying under the waterbender, rage—familiar and acrid— unfurls in him.

The universe has always tested him in the cruellest way. He’s never had control, only the illusion of it. When she grasps his neck, he snarls and knocks her off balance. He twists fast, drawing on the strength that won him his crown, until _he_ is bearing down over _her_. He’s under no illusions; she has stopped fighting. Conceded. It’s the only way he’d toppled her so easily.

Both of them are hesitant, _alive_ and _curious_ , when she guides his hand to her own throat. Both are shaking as she whispers through the bruising kiss, ‘ _Harder_.’

—

They don’t talk about the time in the empty courtyard when Zuko’s fingers left bruises on her neck and how she begged him to press tighter as she came. They don’t talk about it.

But it keeps happening.

—

The tone of the headlines only grows more sensational.

_Ambassador Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, war hero, master waterbender, consort to His Majesty Firelord Zuko: The Rising Tide the Fire Nation Needs._

Katara begins to fear this _Ambassador Katara_ and the looming fall if she disappoints the hopes the world has for her.

—

‘I’m not weak,’ she whispers into his quiet moonlit bedroom, shame festering beneath her skin. She’s not weak, she knows she’s not, so why does it feel so good when he reduces her to nothing? ‘Why do I want you to… Why do I want this?’

He’s still. Silent. Only the thundering pulse she can feel with her sense of his blood belies his calm. ‘I need it too.’

She glances at him, at the moonlit honesty in his eyes.

‘When you submit…’ He licks his lips, tries again. ‘When you give yourself to me, when it's real, I feel like I can trust you with anything.’ He looks at her, pleading for her to understand. ‘If you’re ever not feeling it, don’t pretend. Make me earn it.’

Whole tomes could be written on the flush of warmth that fills her at that.

—

The headlines, the expectations, the constant infuriating need to reaffirm her power with the men of her tribe— these things itch at her. They drive her halfway out of her mind with their festering. Until she discovers how to scratch that itch, at least for a while.

He’s seated at his desk when she enters the Firelord’s study, his crown cast aside; a weight set down on the desk while he works. He’s reading the pleas: those from his people. The ones begging him to lower taxes to spare them more poverty. He’s reading the demands: those from his colleagues in the other Nations. The ones politely outlining why the Fire Nation should pay more in reparations.

Katara takes one look at his stormy expression— simmering anger under tight control— and her mouth goes dry.

‘I’ve got another few hours here,’ he’s telling her without looking up. ‘Though at this rate it could be all night.’

She says nothing, only picks up the discarded crown. 

She slots it into his top knot.

Silently, she gets to her knees before him.

Zuko may be the most powerful man in the Fire Nation in name but he’s so restrained by protocol and decorum and laws his father ignored in favour of tyranny that he’s itching for simple pleasures. Simple power.

He stares down at her, mouth dry but blood _pulsing_.

She doesn’t say a word, wouldn’t know which ones to use to ask for this quiet, shameful thing. Spirits, she just hopes he can read it in her eyes…

The dam fractures.

He reaches out, slowly, almost dreamily, touches his thumb to her mouth, traces its outline. Mesmerised, he pushes between her lips with a quiet, ‘Suck,’ inhaling sharply when her cheeks hollow around his finger.

It’s her eyes that burst the dam. They’re wide and blue and smouldering and he wants to— he wants…

He takes his hand from her mouth, a line of saliva connecting them for a suspended moment; he needs both hands to untie the sash of his robes, push the crimson silk aside, to pull himself from his pants.

The waterbender is trembling, rubbing her thighs together beneath her navy dress. ‘Please,’ she whispers. He stares her back to compliance, glowers at her until she drops her gaze. For that, he’s going to make her wait, going to make her paint herself with his come before she’s even allowed to touch herself between her thighs.

The thought should disturb him. It will, hours from now when guilt replaces the howling want. His left hand curls in her hair, guiding her towards the iron hard flesh he strokes in his right. ‘Suck,’ he tells her in _that_ voice.

—

The headlines gush; the Firelord can do no wrong

 _The Honourable Firelord Zuko: Champion of Peace. Yu Dao Conflict Resolved at the Hands of Our Esteemed Leader_.

Zuko begins to fear his demons, the ones no one but his waterbender knows about. The demons do not look like the man _Firelord Zuko_ that these headline’s paint.

—

‘I’m not my father,’ he whispers into the silence afterwards. After he’s spent the last hour edging her, biting marks into the skin she hides beneath hemlines.

It is a question. A plea.

_Tell me I’m not like him. Tell me this craving for power-over isn’t the beginning of following in his footsteps._

Her cheeks are still flushed but her eyes are sad in the lamplight. She twists the sheets between her fingers. She doesn’t tell him the hundred ways, the thousands, that he is different from the cruelty of Ozai, doesn’t list every one of the countless compassionate moments she’s witnessed in the young Firelord.

Instead, Katara holds his hand and twists the bedsheets around both their fingers. ‘I trust you.’

She thinks that’s more important anyhow.

—

Sometimes he ties her up with rope— dry, woven cord that intentionally leaves subtle marks in her skin. Sometimes he ties her with silk strips, destroys half a dozen formal robes just to bind the waterbender’s body; wrists, elbows, torso, knees, ankles. He’s drunk on the sight of her flesh spilling around the bonds.

Sometimes, though, he ties her with words.

He thinks that might be his favourite.

As much as Zuko’s skin prickles at these games that feel more serious than playful, it’s Katara who comes to him again and again, silk cord in hand and shy longing in her eyes. After the third time it happens, he crouches before her, beckoning her to follow. The movement of her throat as she anxiously swallows makes his blood boil; her crouch brings her closer, nearer.

‘Kneel.’

She clenches her jaw but lowers her knees to the floor, dropping back to sit on her ankles. He thrills. It sickens the man he’s trying to be, this desire to command, but it thrills him more.

‘Shoulders back.’ She presses her shoulder blades together, her whole torso lifting, spine straightening. ‘Good.’

She bites at her smile, the one that threatens to spill up her cheeks.

‘You liked that.’ He hasn’t moved, hasn’t taken the cords she’s gripping between her fingers but he’s… it’s _that_ voice. ‘You’re so good all the time. So good. Always doing what everyone needs you to. People like you are the best in the world… And you want me to make you suffer for it.’

Her own heart tries to choke her, leaps up her throat in a gasp.

‘Look at me.’

She does. His expression could light forest fires.

‘Take your dress off.’ She fumbles for the hem beneath her knees, but he grabs her wrist, the one still holding the silk tie, taking them from her. Silently, he rises. ‘Slowly.’

She wants to ask to stand but that isn’t part of the game. She isn’t supposed to speak unless it’s _yes, Firelord_ or _no, Firelord_. She knows what he’s doing; giving her difficult tasks, giving her reasons to slip up, to make mistakes.

He wants her to make a mistake.

Easing the skirt out from under her, she tugs at the ties so the dress falls, pooling at her waist. Looking up at him, she reaches down and drags it obligingly skywards. Her body still aches with the pleasantly painful consequences of last time she slipped up.

—

Wednesday mornings from nine until eleven, the Earth Kingdom diplomats and their aides meet with the Fire Nation’s. For the Northern Water Tribe, it’s Tuesday at five. The Firelord is in attendance only occasionally— once every six weeks or so. The Southern Water Tribe’s Friday afternoon meeting, however, he makes each week.

He is at the door to the council chambers, greeting the Southern policy writers, the aides, the secretaries. He allows them to pass before him into the room.

Katara pauses by the door, heart counting with thick, painful beats all the parts of him that she likes, that she—

‘Ambassador,’ he greets in _that_ voice, _the_ voice.

It’s a miracle she doesn’t colour from her neck to her hairline. ‘Yes, Firelord Zuko?’

He’s not smiling but she’s made herself a study of this man; the humour peeks from behind his cool professionalism, brightens his eyes. ‘After you, my lady.’

He follows her into the room, spends the hours of council debating her policies and proposals, conceding to the clear merit in her ideas.

Later, behind closed doors, he calls her his ‘ _clever fucking waterbender_ ’ and hunts down her pleasure more mercilessly than he’d ever pursued the Avatar.

—

Yesterday’s paper sits on Zuko’s bedside table, their names screaming from the front page. The look on Katara’s face when she catches sight of it breaks his heart. He moves without thinking, kissing her as though he has no other choice because, despite their dynamic, he doesn’t. It’s her, it’s always been her. He grabs the hair at the back of her neck and kisses her long enough that they share the same air.

As the dam breaks, Zuko and Katara learn a lesson without words: At this threshold of fear and shame that they tread together is a fertile plain where trust grows. And pleasure. The kind that goes deeper than touches and orgasms and tingling flesh. In those secret moments together, they find a release from the weight of donning the heavy, heavy mantles of _Firelord Zuko_ or _Ambassador Katara_.

It’s fitting, somehow, that the dam waters of this thing between them takes on the ravaging nature of a flood.

**Author's Note:**

> Excuse the extended dam metaphor... the dam on my property is leaking and has obviously been on my mind! Hope you enjoyed this almost-sort-of-not-quite smut, MarkedMage! And anyone else who came along for the ride!


End file.
